A n a r c h i c _ U n i v e r s e ®

Why Have an iPhone? Have an iPod Touch Instead!

My son and I gave Nicolas an iPod Touch for his birthday and for Father's Day. It's exactly what he wished to have. You see, the French strongly dislike to speak on the phone. Their politeness oblige formula goes, as the other person picks up, "Am I bothering you?" That is unknown here, even for people who knock at your door or honk, which is even worse.
So the iPod Touch takes care of his needs. Music on the go and the Net at your fingertips. He is very happy and so am I. Our son just got back from the Apple Store with a brand new iPod. His went kaput a few days before the warranty would have expired.
We are all a happy Apple family. I had my 2003 MacBook replaced. Nic got what he wanted for his birthday and now enjoys it in Ottawa, at a conference. Mini-Me enjoys his new iPod. And his summer school English assignment is made easier that way. Hey, we are family, and this goes to Freaky Deaky and Swanksalot.

Got It! Google's First Laser Day

This was a cinch, really. If I had gone and scrolled my pointer of the touchpad over the word clearly forming Google, I'd see the meaning of it.

This is a link in which you can see Google's tribute to the first laser and more.
Just click here, please. I guess first laser beam asks for Pink Floyd. Right now, on a silver platter.

Did You Check Your iGoogle Page Today?

I've been intrigued about it since the wee hours this morning. If you don't have an iGoogle page yet, it's quite simple to have one and very convenient, too.

• Get yourself a Google gmail.com account.( 'Tis irrelevant, but get one anyway.) Its main advantage is the amount of storage available. When you sign up for your gmail.com account, make sure your home page on your computer is http://google.com.

• If it isn't, just type  http://google.com in case you live in the USA.

• To get to the iGoogle page, click on http://www.google.com/ig

• When you click and get to the iGoogle page, you'll see a strange way of spelling Google. I could have left it at that, but inquiring minds want to know...

• So, I typed a search on Google. It was google may 16 2008 . I putzed around with different searches. Then, I found this:http://google.client.shareholder.com/visitors/event/build2/ mediapresentation.cfm?MediaID=25550&Player=1#

• Was my question answered? I don't know. What I do know is if you ask your Google question logically, you'll get an answer. I'll get back with news from Daddy-o Google later. Click here, please, to hear where the expression Daddy-o came from.
 

Test of Firefox 3.0b5

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Nikita Khrushchev

The Twitter Bug

Well, my friends, I have been bitten by the Twitter bug. Not in a 24/7 way; there are house chores to administer, the garden, my son and husband, e-mail subscriptions, and that's the way the ball bounces for someone older with lots of responsibilities.

When I started teaching at LAUSD I finally learned to leave procrastination and tardiness behind. My principal was an old skool Japanese, Dr. Morita. She'd stand by the sign-in cards and show her loathing for tardy teachers. Even considering she was very small, her loathing darted from her eyes straight like a dagger into one's heart. So I learned to be punctual.  It was hard to commute from Central Los Angeles, a Salvadoran neighborhood where I lived, near Koreatown, to San Pedro and Adams, a couple of blocks from the L.A. river.

So, in learning how not to procrastinate, I learned to measure my time more efficiently. However, tardiness runs in the family. My father took his time to go out, my mother took double time to arrive anywhere, and my son seems to cultivate the rush of last-minute deals.

How did you like today's links? How about the one about UCLA's finding on cancer and marijuana?  Now, I didn't add the one on the passing of Bob Marley's mother's death. What am I supposed to add? Let's light up in your honor? I don't think so. I shot the sheriff but I didn't shoot no deputy?  You all must know the meaning of the previous sentence -- I got rid of the top guy but there are many others that remain. Um-hum.

What I am learning in Twitter is the art of being concise. Coming from a verbose country like Brazil, it'll take a while. Twitter is kewl; I am getting to "know" more people in the English-speaking community, which is so important for Anarchic_Universe.

Hey, "I Shot the Sheriff"; how about that?

More on Apple, Inc. and Tech Future

I'm writing from my Concord, the brand new super-powerful MacBook Pro, with a seventeen-inch screen, superloaded. The touchpad is soft and so are the keys. My "hillary" was a 2003 seventeen-inch, so this is a real treat.
The store had a different take on this replacement. The dork who spoke to my son made notes of screws missing, blah-bleh-blew. But the fact was my "hillary" was a lemon from the start, and was sent to Apple, accordingly, for repair.

That's the trick, friendos. The factory replaced my hillary with this spanking new MacBook Pro.  Some people have made snide remarks all Apple, Inc. has is good customer service. I would think that is very good, excellent.

However, Apple today has computers that are compatible with a lot of other software, op. systems, while MS-DOS, a dinosaur, is compatible with the seventies ... MS-DOS. I know we run the risk of having a vice-president who doesn't believe in evolution; however, the secret of technology lies in scientific parameters being surpassed. MS-DOS is like a marriage that never adjusts to time. In its proprietary stand it is also like marriage. Microsoft won't open its source to anyone in the market. Had Apple gone with Pentium chips a while ago it would have been king.

I wish the  metiches who talk about Apple could use a Mac for  a week before passing judgment on Apple computers. Macs are sexy, beautiful and so easy to use.

I named my computer a Concord after the British-French venture in aerospace. In France, as in Brazil, a beautiful woman is an airplane. The explanation is either her aerodynamics or the fact she makes you look up. My Concord is low-maintenance, and rocks big time.

So, if you want to be stuck to an OS with proprietary rights and no support, a.k.a Microsoft,  go ahead, make my day. Otherwise, give the little train that could a shot. You'll never regret your decision to go Mac.

On another note, still on planes, we watched the worst ever talk show last night featuring the snootiest A-hole in the universe, and he doesn't work for Google, imagine if he did. The arrogant jerk is the owner of Virgin. He want to send people to Mars, hello?  I can't believe he was serious, but he was indeed a serious case of a pompous arse. A second opinion? He's ug-lee!

Don't ever feel intimidated by these jerk-os. In the end it will be up to us to decide who wins and who loses. And that's all for this morning, folks. It's still cold at five a.m. here in sunny southern California.

Only Apple, Inc.

Hi this is GHR, my mother is sick today so please excuse me for the short post.
On the bad side, my mom's old PowerBook G4 had to go to Apple to get the logic board replaced. Unfortunately, they don't have any logic boards available to replace it for a long time.
To start from the beginning, my dad bought the computer for my mom's birthday about five years ago. It was the first generation of the PowerBook G4 platinum, and she was happy with the seventeen inch screen. As all computers are, this one was unlucky from the start, the computer was defective, the screen was phasing in and out of sync, the colors would change and look kinda like the first generation color screen computers.
    So, we went to the Apple store to get it fixed, they decided to take it in for three weeks and fixed it. And so, for four years the computer was serving my mother well. Ultimately, computers fail and become a lemon compared to a piece of gold, and about two months ago, the laptop was crashing and demanding a forced shut down (kernel panics). I took a look at it and found that there was a bad memory chip, which did solve the problem for two days, and of course, again it went on a frenzy of restarting on its own.
    I took a look at the panic logs, which only a mac expert child could figure out between two highly educated people (one of them being a computer software engineer), and i saw that the causes of the kernel panics was a faulty Airport Extreme Card, the wireless card built into the computer's logic board. And so, I took it the Apple Store and got a genius to take a look at it.
    The genius looked at the computer all around and started to claim that we could be liable for the defectiveness since we took into ourselves in replacing the hard drive three times, which would be something that is very likely to shock a chip and reck havoc to the computer, since there were marks of screwdrivers between the cover and the base and some screws missing. And I asked her, how much would it be to fix the thing. Her response: "Well, if it is found to be our defect in manufacturing, then it will be covered in around the $300 range, however, if it isn't our fault, then we charge you full price for the parts (around $1700 for a new logic board and airport card and the work) and no warranty would be set." So, I took it into my own hands to tell her, "send it to Apple, if they find it is our fault, then have them call us and ship it back, otherwise, we'll pay 300$ and get it fixed."
    Since then, my mother has been using my laptop, a PowerBook G4 15", which was better equiped than her laptop, and it is a year younger than hers. And so, she has been using it until...

At 3:00 pm, today, we receive a call from Apple, the factory and labs for repairs, telling us that they find that it is a manufacturing defect in the logic board, which they need to replace. However, the woman tells us that the logic board is back ordered and cannont replace it, so, since they wanted to keep with the agreement of fixing the laptop or replacing it, they decided to replace the laptop with a brand new MacBook Pro 17". Somebody pinch me, is it really true??? She told us that it was within the agreement and only charge us the repair cost of $350!!!

I told her about the excellent news and my dad didn't hesitate to accept this offer. Only Apple would do something like this, for a five year old computer to have a faulty logic board and cause it to be replaced with a standard similar computer of the same screen size (but much more memory and processing speeds by 2 times) at no extra cost.

Take that PC! Only Apple will do the job.

I Know What You Did Last Night - Apple, Inc.

After blogging all day, and I have to write slowly so I avoid typos, I fell asleep from seven to nine. When I get up, guess what my husband and teen son had been doing? No wonder the journalist in the Los Angeles Times called Apple users "Followers." That's right. That is a link in today's del.icio.us. links below.

While I was sleeping the boys were watching Steve Jobs annual presentation at the annual Apple convention. You'll ask what I did. I watched it, too, and scolded them to go to bed, both. I had no patience, however, to watch Steve Jobs after Number 3, whatever that was. The thin Air computer is awesome, the renting of films will be the last blow on neighborhood cinemas, coupled with Apple TV 2. I pooh-pooh iPods because I don't need them. The rest, iPhone, all power to Apple, seems to have gone beyond my tech sophistication or needs.

The best news was Apple's alliance with Google. Only Google can make Apple computers more palatable to the rest of the world. I was really happy to hear about their small alliance for now in the iPhone.

I went to read on Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. I highly recommend you read these entries on wikipedia.

You may ask if I am part of the flock of the Apple faithful? Yes, I am, but a little tired of Steve's presentations and repeated "Kewl, really kewl. Innit?" He's really thin, I guess on purpose, and looks older than he should. It must be the pressure, self-imposed and imposed on others. I kinda feel sorry for him. There is no use for millions when you are stressed and unhappy even remarried to a much younger wife.

So that was what we were doing last night. Now it's breakfast and newspaper. I tried to get info from CNN last night on Hill, Bill and Obama to no avail. Oh, well, enjoy our del.icio.us links, whose comments are open. I'll be back shortly after my long breakkfast break. I have been working since six-thirty and now must eat. Oh, the comments on our anarchic_universe links are open. Go ahead and make my day. Good line for a cop movie.
See ya!

Tut-tut, Google; thanks Blogs.ie

My contact with http://blogs.ie  was quite pleasant and effective. But the fake profile of a DUCK in Orkut.com, which transmits the links of rogue photologs impersonating me is still up.

Thanks to swift work by Blogs.ie this photolog is down.

For Fotolog.com I had to actually become a member of their outfit, powered by Google. Then it came down. Complaining to Google's Orkut has been a fruitless effort. Get a grip already. The profile is of a DUCK. Pull it down, already, Orkut.com.

Shame on Google, though. They have been harboring this fake profile, a DUCK, which used fotolog.com and then blogs.ie to display rogue photologs impersonating me, using my photos, which have full copyright, writing in extremely base language. Users of Brazilian Portuguese love the ignorance most everybody has of Portuguese. Years of lawlessness have generated a young people without respect.

An example of how low these people can get.

Their last duck supper at blogs.ie was about my age. They already dislike the fact I am an American. Well, it's been pointless to tell these folks about the Civil Rights Act. I am a Catholic in a Protestant country, a woman, and ageism doesn't go down too well with statements such as,

"Tina is so old that Eve was created from Adam's ribs and God was created from hers."

I'm one more non-practicing Catholic, but the weight of this statement was heavy for me.

C'mon, Google. A profile of a DUCK?  The profile is of a DUCK. Pull it down, already, Orkut.com.

Then they wonder why they lost their bid to Facebook.com.

Googel Hypocrisy: Bingo! YouTube

When I say TV is not good for you, I mean it. This afternoon I caught a program on CNN which reported a fact that made my chins drop. Both of them.
YouTube suspended the account of a civil rights activist who used his YouTube videos to complement his blog on torture in our friendly Middle Eastern countries.

Google cannot get rid of the anonymous crowd that plagues my life in orkut.com. Today I filled out a report again on the fake profile, a DUCK, which uses a board on Orkut to publish links to a new blog impersonating me. The old one I terminated after hunting it down for a week.  For a report of abuse it seems you need to submit DNA to Google, Orkut, whichever of the tentacles of Mini-Me, Maxi_me being You-Know-Who.

Last year I fled Blogger after a mob flooded my first Universo Anárquico. Don't take me wrong. I love Google products, except Blogger, thanks but no thanks.

The DUCK (PATO) is still around, today I filed my second report to Orkut.com. The bloggers who people "Blogueiros do Orkut" complain about me, the owner didn't like to receive a note from me for the owner to do something about it. Honey, S**t or get off the Pot, really. Pass the ownership to any other. Nobody would do a better job than you. And Happy Birthday, too.

What's the difference between me and the violation of my rights and this Middle-Eastern blogger kicked out of world visibility by YouTube?

Our friends have oil. That's all. Or That's oil. Crummy joke.  Good night.